Detroit : In the News

Extra, Extra! Read all about it! ... in another daily Metro Detroit newspaper. It drops next week and is called the Detroit Daily Press.

Excerpt:

The Stern brothers, who previously published a Detroit Daily Press strike newspaper in the 1960s, will charge 50 cents for their Monday through Saturday editions, and $1 on Sundays.

The operation, which employs a staff of 60, including a number of former editorial and business employees from other newspaper companies in Metro Detroit, is based in leased space at the former Daily Tribune offices in Royal Oak. Mark Stern said the paper will court readers who want seven-day delivery, and advertisers seeking a cut-rate print option. The Detroit News and Free Press reduced their home delivery schedules in March; The News is home-delivered Thursdays and Fridays, and the Free Press Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

"We're a 50-cents paper when the other guys are a dollar," Mark Stern said. "Our ads cost 75 percent less."

Read the entire article here.

A light rail up Woodward would not just be for Detroit. And a commuter rail from Detroit to Ann Arbor wouldn't just be for those two cities. Mass transit, when done right, could coalesce and serve the entire region.

Excerpt:

"Gas prices hit $4 a gallon last year and will go up again," he said. "If we can make it so that commuter rail is faster and cheaper and you won't have to pay to park your car, then people will definitely ride."

The Detroit Department of Transportation predicts 20,000 daily riders on the Woodward line by 2030, with 11,100 roundtrips per day. The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) estimates 5,800 daily riders for the Ann Arbor-Detroit line, with four round trips daily.

Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, whose district includes part of the proposed Woodward Avenue rail route, said it's important for both projects to become a reality. "They are separate plans, but they show regional cooperation."

Businesses would move close to the rail routes and the region would be "more attractive to live, work, and play," he said.

Read the entire article here.

There isn't a moat around Detroit and the suburbs aren't islands. A healthy Detroit is a healthy Southeast Michigan. A healthy Southeast Michigan is a healthy state. One can't exist without the other and the other.

Excerpt:

That said, Jackson said we in Michigan are too negative when it comes to Detroit. Downtown has many attractive features, drawing 5.6 million entertainment visitors a year. Despite the city's reputation for crime, Jackson said FBI statistics show the city is safer than many other large cities in the United States.

In Livingston County, we need to pay attention to Jackson. The region is defined to outsiders by Detroit. As Jackson says, outside of our immediate area, the Detroit brand is far more recognizable than the Michigan brand.

That brand needs to be a positive one. If Detroit is vital, then the entire region benefits. It's encouraging to see a Detroit leadership that appears to want to work with the rest of the region, rather than demonizing it.

Read the entire article here.

Temporary shops sound silly at first. Stores that come in -- like mercenaries -- set up shop, sell, and leave six months or so later seem like they wouldn't make sense. How could that possibly work or revive retail? Well, apparently it can be done.

Excerpt:

Analysts say that if pop-up stores -- ephemeral outdoor retail spaces used to draw marketing buzz and promote new products -- are a sign of flush times, the temporary store is its counterpoint.

It makes sense that temporary stores, open six months or less, could buoy retail in Detroit at a time when the sector is mired in a historic low.

"The concept of temporary stores is really more realistic for the Michigan market," said Cynthia Kratchman, a broker with Landmark Commercial Real Estate Services in Farmington Hills. In this economy, landlords are more willing to accept shorter term leases and tenants with less business experience, Kratchman said. "They are also willing to do deals on terms that they never would have entertained even a year ago."

Read the entire article here.

Sesame Street is now 40 years old. And, in honor of the great children's program, here is a shout-out to cooperation. A bill designed to allow the Detroit and Wayne County land banks to work together was announced with bipartisan support this week.

See, we do learn things from television.

Excerpt:

Bills that would allow land banks operated by Detroit and Wayne County to merge into a redevelopment entity with expanded powers were announced Monday, with bipartisan support.

The legislation would provide for a Detroit/Wayne County Redevelopment Authority that would "enable the city and county to have a cohesive strategy for stabilizing and redeveloping tax-reverted properties," said Sen. Tom George, R-Kalamazoo, in a news release.

Read the entire article here.

Students and cops are getting together to talk about medical marijuana. The keynote presentation will be on the law regarding medical marijuana and, additionally, there will be a panel of experts -- in which Cheech and Chong do not participate -- to discuss the legal, medical, and civic issues of the topic.

Info:

The student chapters of the National Lawyers Guild and the American Civil Liberties Union, joined by Police Officers for Drug Law Reform, will host the Michigan Medical Marijuana Symposium on Saturday, October 3, 2009, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at Wayne State University Law School. The symposium features leading experts to help clarify Michigan's new Medical Marijuana Act.

Read the entire post here.

Though some in and out of Detroit think of the city as a walled island, it is not. Just as the brain can't exist without the heart, and the heart without the lungs, Detroit can't exist without the suburbs and vice-versa. Detroit Mayor Bing realizes that and reached out to regional leaders in a way that has been void in Detroit politics for some time.

Excerpt:

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing reached out to Oakland County leaders tonight. He said southeast Michigan needs to work together to move forward.

"Detroit needs Oakland County," Bing said, as he addressed the Oakland County Board of Commissioners. "Detroit needs Macomb. Detroit needs Wayne County."

Bing's visit to the county commission was the first from a Detroit mayor since Kwame Kilpatrick visited five years ago. Bing's showed none of Kilpatrick's swagger and didn't sugarcoat Detroit's problems.

Read the entire article here.

What is gained in Detroit is gained in Southeast Michigan. So, as Detroit's TechTown rolls out its agenda of creating 1,200 new companies in just three years, its surrounding communities and cities stand to benefit.

Excerpt:

"Recessions such as this one ... set the stage for future growth. As economist Joseph A. Schumpeter wrote in 1942, 'creative destruction shakes loose people from old, dying businesses and forces them to figure out new ways to be useful,'" the Kauffman Internet site also noted.

"In economic development terms, no one, nowhere has ever done anything of that scale ever before," Charlton said.

"A few years back, the government of Japan had a program to create 1,000 companies in the entire country. We're talking about 1,200 companies just in Southeast Michigan," he said.

"If we achieve that, and we will, we're going to change the face of Detroit," said Charlton, adding the initiative is "very much a partnership" with other organizations in the region such as Automation Alley, Ann Arbor Spark and the 10 foundations that have put up money for the New Economy Initiative.

Read the entire article here.

When the going gets tough, the tough get... creative. Local theaters, like pretty much everything else, are feeling the pinch. So, to help weather the storm local houses are tweaking their productions a bit and getting a little innovative.

Excerpt:

Corporate sponsorship is down, and season subscriptions are getting harder to sell. For Detroit's professional theater community, that means innovation, extra effort and even creative scheduling are required to keep audiences coming to live shows.

"It seems like now, more than ever, artists are working their butts off to bring audiences something truly amazing," says Joe Plambeck, whose tiny Ringwald Theatre in Ferndale opened in 2007. The Ringwald's third season got off to an early start this weekend with a scaled-down version of the demanding '90s Broadway hit Rent.

Northville's Tipping Point Theatre, which is doing only comedies this season, is getting a jump on fall, too, with A Sleeping Country. The play opened Thursday -- more than two weeks before Labor Day -- partly to attract actors like Sarab Kamoo and Aaron T. Moore before they made commitments to other theater companies.

Read the entire article here.

The Woodward Dream Cruise many things for many people. For car restorers it means a time to shine, for some it's a time for nostalgia, and yet for others, who live near Woodward, it's a time of car congestion and having your own street blocked off for parking. Regardless, what happens during the cruise is what made Detroit, well, Detroit. That's changing now-a-days... but, as the New York Times says, it's still the beating heart of the American automobile biz.

Excerpt:

Today, you won’t see much real racing on Woodward, and the Detroit Three are fighting their battles in other arenas. You will see some machinery that is obviously built more for go than show, and quiet negotiations are sometimes conducted at the side of the road. But if races take place, they’re probably held in some obscure and distant place.

For most Detroiters, Woodward is more about entertainment than competition. And perhaps more about the past and the future than the moment. Today, Woodward is the cruise, the party, the celebration and the affirmation. It’s a place where car folk can go to dream about the way things were and hope for better days. It’s the beating heart of the American automobile business.

Read the entire article here.

It's a bit Jetsons-y, an elevated high-speed rail that's powered by hydrogen. But, what the heck, right? Let's get a little futuristic. The trip from Grand Rapids to Detroit is expected to take 40 minutes. If it comes to fruition, it should be a nice economic bump to the city, bringing in people from Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Ann Arbor for the games and festivals Detroit has to offer.

Excerpt:

The project was proposed by the privately owned Interstate Traveler Company, located just north of Ann Arbor. Company officials are asking the state to provide free use of the right-of-way along Michigan's interstate freeway system.

The railway's cars would levitate on top of an elevated hydrogen-based track and be propelled by energy from magnets. Cars holding people, freight and vehicles would cycle at high speeds, stopping in Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ann Arbor and Detroit.

Local business leaders say the concept has the potential to create a new manufacturing base in Michigan and spur economic development.

"Clearly this would bring a competitive advantage to our state if we could move people and freight and cars and vehicles from Grand Rapid to Detroit, and eventually to other Midwestern states," said Jared Rodriguez, a lobbyist with the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce.

Read the entire article here.

Additional piece from the Grand Rapids Press that links this high-rail plan to The Simpsons. Complete with hilarious clips. Check it out here.

It's usually a good sign when you see organizations -- both private and public -- or regions working together. And it's a good sign when you see both the privately backed rail line and the public rail line project working together to maximize their funding.

Excerpt:

"We're in full commitment. We're working together," White said. He's the city's lead on the Detroit Department of Transportation's Detroit Options for Growth Study, a $371 million plan to run light rail from downtown to the state fairgrounds at Eight Mile Road.

The M1 plan is a 3.4-mile, 12-stop curbside line, with 12-18 months of construction starting by year-end. It will operate as a nonprofit and eventually be turned over to a regional system.

Backers include Penske Corp. founder Roger Penske, chairman of the project; Peter Karmanos Jr., founder of Detroit-based software maker Compuware Corp.; Mike Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings and co-founder of Little Caesar Enterprises Inc.; and Quicken Loans/Rock Financial founder Dan Gilbert, the project's co-chairman.

DDOT's study calls for a center-of-street rail service from downtown to the state fairgrounds at Eight Mile Road. The project now calls for the M1 Rail plan to replace a portion of its route, and needs money spent on M1 Rail to act as the required local match for federal funding.

Read the entire article here.